almost a charivari

View from a Rhino House: crowning moments

In the Czech Republic a convicted fraudster, on the run from prison, was hired as the chief economist at a museum, where he stole some 10 million Czech crowns, national media reported.

Police arrived unannounced on Thursday morning to arrest Vladimir Prokop at his office at the National Agricultural Museum. He made his escape through the museum’s exhibition halls, down an emergency exit staircase & then hailed a cab in front of the museum’s main entrance & in full view of a number of police squad cars & officers, it was reported late on Friday.

The money stolen amounts to over 30% of the museum’s annual budget. As a “strange-but-true” footnote, most of the stolen cash was found in plastic bags at Prokop’s flat when police searched it later on Thursday afternoon.

Prokop got the job under a false identity & after passing himself off as a trained economist; it appears no checks were made on his background & no references were taken-up by the museum. Calls to his phone number, still listed on the museum’s website on Saturday, went unanswered.

Last June he escaped from prison where he was serving time for embezzling 10 million Czech crowns from the Prague branch of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, where he managed its foreign donations.

Got to love a man who doesn’t give-up the first time he’s knocked back.